Warehouse Management System
What is Warehouse?
A Warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport, customs etc. they are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of cities, town, villages.
A large, small or medium size buildings for storing things before they sold, used or sent out to shops.
A warehouse is a commercial building generally used for storage goods warehousing is the process of proper storage and handling of goods and cargo using scientific methods in warehouse and making them available easily and smoothly when needed.
Types of Warehouse
1. Simple inventory warehouse
In this warehouse process is simple inventory maintain
2. Store Warehouse
Store is in house facility to help manufacturing activities. Such as incoming and in some cases outgoing also stored in stores, for example, raw Material store, electrical items stores, mechanical items and machine part stores, Finished goods stores etc.
Raw material stores
Electrical Parts Store
Machine Parts Stores
Finished goods stores
3. Distribution Center
Distribution center for a set of products is a warehouse or other specialized building with refrigeration or air conditioning which is stocked.
4. Pick, Pack and Ship Warehouse
5. Cold Storage
6. ON-Demand storage
7. Bonded Warehouse
8. Smart Warehouse
Classification of Warehouse
From process point of view warehouse can be classified as
1. Basic Warehouse
2. Big Warehouse
Multiple truck coming with multiple products in the warehouse
Multiple truck loading and unloading every day in warehouse.
The material storing and high rack storage, rack storage and open storage
Need appropriate put-away to store the materials in respective storage bins
Need appropriate picking strategy to pick the material to load the truck to deliver the customer
Multiple resources and manpower are involve to in warehouse activities like unloading the truck and keep in respective storage bin, and pick the delivery quantity and load in to truck for outbound delivery.
Need to manage inventory of incoming and outgoing materials, and available stock of materials in warehouse.
Maintain right product deliver to the customer right time.
3. Complex Warehouse
Why do we required IT & Software solution for Warehouse Management?
Inventory Management incoming, outgoing, and stocks of products with in warehouse
Receiving of goods and put away of goods in dedicated place (storage bin) to store within warehouse
Sorting process to optimize warehouse
Loading in time the outbound deliveries goods
Movement and storage of goods in warehouse
Location management
Picking strategy to for customer delivery order
Packing of goods for customer delivery order
Invoicing and dispatch activities
Inventory reconciliation
An effective and right solution for a warehouse depends upon business requirement, and volume, and number of process going on in the warehouse.
Right solution need to suggest to the business fulfill their requirements for smooth operation of their warehouses.
Most Important Warehouse Processes
Goods Receiving
Put-away of goods
Picking
Packing
Dispatching
Shipping
Kitting and de-kitting
Inventory tracking
FIFO/LIFO/FEFO picking strategies
Value added services
Goods returns from customers
Reporting and analytics
Available Warehouse Management Solution in Market
There are hundreds of warehouse management solutions available in the market, here is popular one are given below.
Survey was carried out regarding prefer WMS system the results was as below
What Solution SAP Has?
1. SAP Inventory Management
SAP Inventory management use
Manage stocks of merchandise on a quantity and value basis
Plan, enter and provide evidence of all goods movements
In SAP Inventory Management mange stocks on a site and storage location level, and can assign each site a number of storage location, can link warehouse management to inventory management.
Inventory management enables you to have an overview of your current stock status all time.
A material document created for every transaction
Complete audit trail for all goods movements
Goods movements are valuated automatically and results updates on the financial accounting stock accounts.
2. SAP Warehouse Management
The SAP Warehouse management application is fully integrated into SAP R/3 system.
Integrated with Material Management
Integrated with Sales & distribution
Integrated with Quality Management
The material document created for the material movement generated either in MM, SD, or QM modules. For all Goods receipt (GR), from other vendors and plants, document generated in MM module. For Goods Issue (GI) for either to production, others plants, will be generated in MM module.
As quality management is active in the organization, all materials will pass the quality inspection process during GR and GI and post change document will be generated during put away or stock removal of material in warehouse.
Warehouse Management (WM) helps to identify stock status of materials at bin level. It is tool to assist in processing all goods movements and maintaining inventories.
WM Process flow
Define and manage complex warehouse structure
Optimize material flow using advanced put-away and picking techniques.
Process, goods receipts, goods issues, and stock transfers quickly and easily.
3. SAP Extended Warehouse Management
SAP Extended Warehouse Management is a part of SAP Supply chain management like warehoused management system, but it provides more robust and advanced features to manage key activities in a warehouse.
SAP EWM is used to efficiently manage inventory in a warehouse and for supporting processing of goods movement. It allows any company to control their warehouse’s inbound and outbound processes and movement of goods in the warehouse.
SAP EWM is similar to warehouse management system but it provides more features like picking, put away, RF framework, Warehouse Structure and more flexible options to manage warehouse functions.
You can create new elements like activity area, resources, labor management and work centers in SAP EWM which were not available in WM.
SAP EWM provides more a robust solution to manage warehouse functions in an organization.
Key Features Comparison SAP IM/WM/EWM Solutions
What we can adopt in S/4HANA
SAP Inventory Management (IM)
SAP Warehouse Management (WM) (sunset by 2025/2027
SAP S/4HANA Embedded Extended Warehouse Management (Centralized EWM)
Basic Embedded Extended Warehouse Management
Advanced Embedded Extended Warehouse Management
4. Decentralized EWM SCM EWM or S/4HANA EWM
SAP ERP ECC System separate Set of Box, SCM EWM or S/4HANA EWM on separate set of box
Advantage of SAP S/4HANA Embedded EWM
Simplified system land scape. An embedded EWM solution drastically simplifies the IT landscape
Seamless Integration
Accelerated implementation
Flexible licenses
Real-time insights
Less data duplication
Limitation of SAP S/4HANA Embedded EWM
With Embedded EWM it is not possible to integrate with storage locations in other SAP ERP system
The embedded EWM solution is not adaptable with multiple warehouse pr with large material flow system traffic.
It cannot keep operational in case of ERP system down.
Rajesh Sharma
SAP WM/EWM Functional Consultant
§ Linked in profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajesh-sharma-3a565821/
§ Twitter: RajeshS98151512/RAJESH SHARMA@RAJESHS21287609
§ SAP Blogs: https://www.sastrageek.com/blog
Comments